If helping out with the preparations for the Confucius Cup (Irish Chess and Go Congress) has given me anything, it has given me an interest in tournament draw utilities. Well actually that’s something of a lie. I’ve always had a vague interest in that direction. I have a bit of a train spotty love of reading over old tournament result tables to see who finished in what position, and who beat who. It started with Chess tournaments, but it has continued into Go tournaments as well. Should I be seeking medical help over this? There are some who might consider it necessary, but I tend towards regarding it as a harmless little obsession that has the beneficial side effect of producing good documentation of the tournament activities of the various Go organisations I might try to assist.

For that end, I put together this little tool h92html, which although it isn’t very clever, does let me quickly put an end to missing tournament results tables on the IGA website. There are increasingly a lot of them. After running registrations for the Open and the Rapid through GoDraw and OpenGotha, I’ve also realised that there are other utilities that can be useful. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a xml2gdi to dispense with the need for that, and indeed to run the same draw in both. Hmm, perhaps not very nice, but it can still be a funky little utility if you don’t want to deal with GoDraw having bad to super-bad support for non UK players. Beyond that I’ve also got the mild itch to reboot Ire, luckily I am too busy.